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Why Your Site Is Stuck in Maintenance Mode (And How to Fix It)

71 threads Sep 16, 2025 Plugin → Maintenance

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You've turned off the Maintenance plugin, but your website is still showing the "Coming Soon" or maintenance page. This is a common and incredibly frustrating issue reported by many users. Based on community support threads, the problem is almost always related to caching, not a bug in the plugin itself.

Why This Happens

When the Maintenance plugin is active, it serves a specific page to visitors. Various systems on your server, in your browser, or at your DNS provider save a copy of this page to load it faster in the future. This is called caching. When you deactivate maintenance mode, these cached versions of the page must be cleared or "purged" to allow the live site to be served again. If the cache isn't cleared, the old maintenance page will continue to show.

How to Fix a Stuck Maintenance Page

Follow these steps in order. The solution is almost always found in one of them.

  1. Clear Your Browser Cache: The most common fix is a simple hard refresh. On Windows, press Ctrl + F5. On a Mac, press Cmd + Shift + R. Alternatively, open a new incognito or private browsing window to test your site. If it works there, your main browser's cache is the culprit.
  2. Clear Your WordPress Cache Plugin: If you use a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, or LiteSpeed Cache, find its settings in your WordPress dashboard and use its "Empty All Caches" or "Purge Cache" function.
  3. Clear Your Server/Hosting Cache: This is the most frequent cause. Many hosting providers (e.g., Kinsta, WP Engine, Agius Cloud) use server-level caching (like Nginx, FastCGI) that is separate from any WordPress plugins. Log into your hosting provider's control panel (e.g., cPanel) and look for a section labeled "Caching," "Speed," or "Optimization." There should be an option to clear or purge the cache.
  4. Clear Your CDN Cache: If you use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare, you must log into your Cloudflare dashboard and purge the cache there. Server and plugin clears will not affect the CDN.
  5. Wait It Out: In some cases, particularly with resilient hosting caches or CDNs, it can take a few minutes (or even longer) for the cache to clear across all systems globally after you have purged it. Be patient.
  6. Test With a URL Parameter: To confirm the issue is caching, add a random string to your website's URL (e.g., https://yoursite.com/?nocache=123). If your live site loads with this parameter, it definitively proves the main URL is being served from a cache.

What If I'm Locked Out of WordPress?

If the maintenance page is preventing you from accessing wp-admin, you will need to disable the plugin manually. This can be done via your hosting file manager or an FTP client by navigating to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory and renaming the maintenance folder to something like maintenance-off.

Final Checklist

  • Browser Cache → Hard Refresh/Incognito Mode
  • WordPress Cache Plugin → Purge Cache
  • Hosting Control Panel → Purge Server Cache
  • CDN (e.g., Cloudflare) → Purge CDN Cache
  • Wait a few minutes and test from a different device.

Remember, the Maintenance plugin itself does not leave behind code that causes this. The problem is universally a cached version of the page that needs to be cleared. If you've checked all these boxes, your site should be live again.

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